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Saturday, January 23, 2010

Weekly Report: Week 26

Finally, an update on my neglected blog.

We are back in the groove after being back for a couple of weeks. We had a great school week. Here's what we did:

LA: Is it me or was list I-2 really easy? D-Man didn't have any trouble at all and got a 100% on his test. Now, I will say that we buckled down and did all of our enrichments including sentence dictation and two whiteboard quizzes. He also got to move the phonogram "ough" to the mastered (blue) pile which was a big deal for him as it has 6 sounds. He was very motivated to remember all of them. Now, he only has 2 phonograms ("ei" and "ey") in the yellow pile and one in the red pile ("ie"). Those are mostly because he mixes them up. If I give him "ey" first, he can get the other two, but they aren't mastered yet.

His reading is taking off even more. I gave him the Quick Reading Assessment on Sonlight's website on Thursday and he tested into Readers 2 Intermediate. Pretty cool. He's improved even more on his fluency. It seems like something has clicked in his brain and he's able to smoothly read words he hasn't read before. Just tonight, he was reading a sign in our kitchen that said, "no excuses" and just blurted it out. The weird thing is that he'll often pause to sound out a CVC word. I think it's out of habit and it isn't too noticeable, but interesting. We are still trucking through Sonlight's Readers 1 package, but it is building his confidence to read books below his level. In the last two weeks, he's read 5 weeks worth of the schedule. Being able to finally read fluently has shown both of us that he LOVES to read Dr. Suess books. He likes the rhythm and it helps that he and Dr. Suess share a similar sense of humor. Readers 1 includes several Dr. Suess books (and others Theodore Geisel wrote) plus we have several other on the shelves, but he's read most of those and is excited to check some out at the library this week. It's the first time that we're going to get him specific books to read to himself. A big day in our house.

Oh, and D-Man started a journal on the books he's reading. It's pretty simple: he tells me what he wants to say about the book, I write his sentences on the board, and he copies them into his book. Then, he draws a picture. I had a little journal in my stuff and mentioned it to him as an idea. He loved it and spent the next hour on a page about Little Bear. I'm not going to make it a mandatory assignment, but it's a good opportunity for him to get in some narration practice. I don't have any pics right now, but it warrants it's own post anyway.

Math: We're still moving right along in Horizons 1 and Singapore 1B. We finished through lesson 58 in Horizons 1 and 57 in Singapore 1B. The only thing he's encountered that was remotely challenging was the concept of division. Singapore briefly introduces it in 1B and we covered a few weeks ago. He got it, but I actually had to explain it to him. Now we are back to doing addition and subtraction with numbers up to 100 which is easy to him. He has expressed some concern about the lack of difficulty in this section. Evidently, it isn't meeting his expectations. I've explained to him that math is like soccer and basketball. We just need to keep practicing. He's fine with it and likes the exercises, but is eager to get to numbers over 100.

Sonlight: We finished P4/5!!! Yipee!! Well, I'm a little excited. On one hand, we did it. On the other hand, it was a great core and I'm sad that we're done. The good news is that I'll be doing it again with C-Monster in a little over a year. Since then, we started our quick run through P3/4 (Fiction, Fairy Tales, and Fun). I thought it would be intense, but it is turning out to be light on reading so far. I think the reason is that we got used to the longer stories in P4/5, so this is a step back. It's not a big deal. The boys are still loving the stories and I've used the opportunity to schedule in some other great books that we got for Christmas and a few Usborne science books we had lying around. We have already read many of the P3/4 stories in the 9 months since I started slowing buying it, but these stories are meant to be read over and over (and over, etc.) again.

We also started up DEL again. We had stalled out on book 3 due to D-Man's aversion to outlining. I decided to add it back in and do it a few times per week. So, we did 1 page on Monday and 1 page on Wednesday. Then, on Friday, D-Man decided to finish up book 3 (5 pages) and run through 12 pages of book 4. He wanted to keep going, but I was done. I made him go play. He likes book 4 better because it has more to do with actual letters, numbers and writing rather than pictures and coloring.

Other cool stuff: We're still using our snap circuit set a few times a week. D-Man calls it school, but that's just so he can do it first thing in the morning. I need to read up on circuits a bit because I can't explain what's going on in all of the circuits anymore. They were simple at the beginning, but keep getting more complex. I did take EE in school, but that was awhile ago. Hopefully, it will come back. D-Man also made it through all of the Mighty Mind cards this week (I'm going to post about what exactly this is later). Now he's on his second run. The first time, I helped him a bit as the cards got more complicated, but this time he's on his own. C-Monster has worked his way through card 13 with no help so far.

Well, that's a good week for us. It was really nice out so we spent a ton of time outside riding scooters and playing bugman in the backyard.

What a great week. We love Singapore Math here and my son is a HUGE Dr. Seuss fan (still and he's almost 8yo). When the times comes, you might read My Father's Dragon. Boys just seem to really love that silly humor.

Miss Moe,Yes it is exciting!! We've been on the path to reading for awhile and it's nice to see it become easy to him and for him to enjoy it. Thanks for the encouragement.

Daisy,Thanks for the recommendation. My Father's Dragon is on our list of RA's for this year, but I haven't read it. I'm glad you think my ds will like it. We might have to read all of the other books in the series when we're done

Great week! My little man is lovin Dr. Seuss and ditto on the sense of humor thing here too! :o)

Isn't it amazing how things just click when you're not expecting it and then they're reading with wonderful fluency that would make you think, if you didn't know better, that they'd been doing it for years!

BTW, one of your posts in a recent thread on TWTMF has inspired me to look into WWE 1 to go along w/FLL next year. So, thank you! ;o)

I was going back and forth over whether to include WWE or not. I'm glad my question on TWTM helped you too. I'm not going to buy the workbooks, just the TM and take the selections from our reading. I'm pretty excited about it.

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About Me

I'm a child of the Lord just trying to figure out how best to raise these four little boys He's given me and loving almost every minute of it. It's amazing how much He reveals to me through this journey...and I'm supposed to be the one teaching.